Yes, I think I may promise myself a reputation of a thousand years, if I do but give myself the necessary trouble.

Well! but what's a thousand years after all, or twice a thousand years?
Woe is me! I may just as well sit still.
"Would I had never been born!" I said to myself; and a thought would occasionally intrude.

But was I ever born?
Is not all that I see a lie--a deceitful phantom?
Is there a world, and earth, and sky?
Berkeley's doctrine--Spinosa's doctrine! Dear reader, I had at that time never read either Berkeley or Spinosa.

I have still never read them; who are they, men of yesterday?
"All is a lie--all a deceitful phantom," are old cries; they come naturally from the mouths of those who, casting aside that choicest shield against madness, simplicity, would fain be wise as God, and can only know that they are naked.

This doubting in the "universal all" is most coeval with the human race: wisdom, so called, was early sought after.